Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

There has been a lot of discussion about the Federal Reserve (Fed) and when it will move its interest rate to something higher than the present 0 to 0.25%. The Fed has been at the zero bound for years. My friend Jeff Saut at Raymond James noted that there are people who have been in… Read More

Recently, I wrote a three-part series on how to start investing. Today, I want to look at an advanced topic. Generally, I avoid advanced topics in investing, for two reasons: Most people don’t even have a grasp of beginner-level investing yet. The vast majority of “advanced” investing techniques can’t beat a simple, diversified portfolio over time…. Read More

Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Charles Goodhart When it was first introduced in 1975, Goodhart’s Law focused mainly on social and economic measures. Since then, many financial market indicators have lost their forecasting power and succumbed to Goodhart’s Law. Nevertheless, Goodhart’s Law in no way… Read More

Sharply lower oil prices have occasioned a huge discussion about their impact. We see it play out daily in newspapers, on TV and radio, at websites, on blogs, and in market letters. The range of forecasts runs from one extreme to another. On one side, pundits predict a recession resulting from a US energy sector… Read More

This is the seventh installment in our series on how individual investors can assess their financial health. In my experience, I’ve found that many people have no idea how much they’re paying for the privilege of investing. And survey data supports my observations. Ignorance is not bliss. Analysis of investment expenses suggests that many people… Read More

This is the sixth installment in our series on how individual investors can assess their financial health. Diversification is a perennial topic among investors, and if it seems controversial at times, that may be due to the fact that people don’t always share the same understanding of what it means. But diversification isn’t about investing… Read More

There have been a number of surprises for investors in 2014. Bonds have markedly out-performed stocks for the year-to-date. The S&P500 is up 2.4% since the start of 2014, as compared to the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, which is up by 3.5%. Even more striking, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) is up… Read More

Every investor has, I hope, read the standard disclaimer on mutual fund and ETF performance documents that ‘past performance does not predict future performance,’ or other text to that effect. Still, when you read a fund company’s statement that ‘x% of our funds have out-performed their category average’ or that ‘x% of our funds are… Read More

In the financial advisory business, one of the most pressing and controversial topics is how much money people need to save during their working years in order to provide for long-term retirement income. The research on this topic has evolved quite a lot in recent years, and a recent issue of Money magazine features a… Read More

One of the least-understood aspects of investing among individual investors is the total costs associated with building and maintaining a portfolio. In comparison to the huge rises and falls that we see in the market, the expenses associated with mutual funds or brokerage costs may sound small. Over long periods of time, however, the ups… Read More